Blu-ray Sales: Rango Feels At Home on Top

July 28th, 2011

Despite only going on sale on Friday, Rango led all new releases and took top spot on the Blu-ray sales chart. It wasn't even really close, as it sold 353,000 units and generated $7.05 million. Its opening week Blu-ray ratio of 37% is strong, especially for a kids movie.
The Lincoln Lawyer opened in second place with just a hair below 200,000 units while generating $3.86 million in opening week sales. Its Blu-ray ratio was just 29%, but it is a character driven drama, and those films don't need to be seen in High Definition to be enjoyed. Likewise, Insidious sold just under 30% of its total units in Blu-ray for opening week sales of 134,000 units / $2.73 million. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I remained strong on High Definition selling an additional 97,000 units / $2.31 million for the week giving it sales of 2.96 million units / $66.54 million in total. It might already be the first Blu-ray release of 2011 to hit 3 million units sold. Considering there are only three DVDs released in 2011 that have reached that mark so far, this is a very good result. Rounding out the top five was Sucker Punch with 40,000 units / $774,000 for the week and totals of 376,000 units / $7.70 million after three.

The other Friday release, Arthur, opened in seventh place with 38,000 units / $881,000. This gives it an opening week Blu-ray ratio of 28%, which is acceptable for this genre. Entourage: Season Seven opened in ninth place with 33,000 units / $883,000 for an opening Blu-ray ratio of 19%. This is low, but not uncommon for Blu-ray versions of TV on DVD releases. Robot Chicken: Star Wars III opened in 18th place with 18,000 units / $292,000. Its opening week Blu-ray ratio was 24%, which is a good balance between the Nerd power of the show and the weakness of TV on DVD.

One last note, Tangled may have fallen out of the top ten a while ago, but it still managed to reach 2.5 million units sold. This is an impressive milestone, especially for a kids movie and it bodes well for the fall and this year's Christmas Shopping Season.

The roller coaster ride that is the overall Blu-ray market continued, this time we saw amazing growth with sales up 104% by units and 68% by revenue from last week. Compared to last year, gains were even more incredible with increases of 261% in terms of units and 232% in terms of revenue. It is worth noting that this week last year was one of the worst weeks for Blu-ray sales in all of 2010. There were only two other weeks to sell fewer units, and only one other week to generate less revenue. DVD also saw growth from last week and last year; in fact, its week-over-week improvements were better than on Blu-ray, which left the High Definition ratios a little lower this week at 29% in terms of units and 37% in terms of revenue.